whirlwind weekend (part 2)

I forgot to mention yesterday that on the first day there, my sweet husband took me by Archivers. What an awesome scrapbooking store! I could stay in there for HOURS, but I had three males waiting on me, so kept my shopping to a minimum.

On the second day of our trip, we got up and packed, walked to get breakfast, and then headed out to the Georgia Aquarium, only a few blocks from the parking garage (which, btw was a nightmare...so old and only a 6 foot clearance!). On the way, we crossed Olympic Park and Nickelodeon was there with their Slime Across America show. We stopped and watched the show a little while before heading to the aquarium to stand in line for what seemed like forever. It was nice though...expensive, but nice. The kids loved every minute of it. I've included some photos from our second day of the trip. Hey...with rising prices of everything, this may be the only vacation we actually take!

whirlwind weekend

We had a good weekend....though it went by quickly. We left Friday morning for Atlanta. My husband bought something off Ebay, and we picked it up in Suwanee, GA and made a weekend trip of it.

The first night was just getting to the hotel and exploring downtown on foot. We ate dinner at a place called Tropical Cajun (underground, no less). Great food. I tried fried Plantain for the first time. Yum! These are some photos of the view from our 18th story room at the Hilton. On Saturday, we went to the Georgia Aquarium. More on that tomorrow. Gotta run finish laundry from unpacking!

A Baker's Dozen

Happy Wednesday to you! I mentioned in a previous post that I would tell you more about a class I'm taking. It's a lot of fun. During the first five days, we were told to gather items from our own scrapbook stash. We had to decorate an egg carton and fill each "egg" with stuff that the instructor specifically assigned. We also had to gather photos and place them in 13 envelopes, alas the name "A Baker's Dozen." Then on the sixth and following days, we were given a sketch and a layout assignment. I have really enjoyed the class. I have managed to stay caught up and get a lot of pictures scrapbooked. Here are some pages I've done lately. Click on each one to see a larger view. More later!

Monday this and that

Aren't my guys so handsome? I love this photo from Father's Day, taken by my friend, Margaret. Matthew's eyes are about as sensitive to light as his daddy's. He's squinting in lots of outdoor photos! Oh well...he's still my cutie!

This morning, my oldest left for baseball camp. He goes each day from 9-4. My neighbor takes the boys, and I pick them up. I know he'll have fun, and it gets him off the couch. In July, he goes to church camp for a few days. He'll enjoy it, but I'll miss him.

Yesterday, we had friends over to swim and cookout. We grilled hot dogs, then went out by the pool to eat. We had hardly sat down when we heard BOOM! Thunder was rolling! At first it sounded far away, so we stayed out a little bit longer, but when we heard the big KABOOM....we ran for the house...good thing we did too because the lightning started to brighten the sky! It rained for about an hour. We got a little swim time, but not much. Oh well...we had fun anyway. It's always better with friends!

That's about it for now. In my next post, I'll let you in on what I've been doing in my Baker's Dozen class. Have a great Monday!

Fun Googling

Found this fun little activity. It takes about 5-10 minutes and is so fun, especially if you're bored. Let me know if you tried it. :)

Open up your internet browser and do Google searches as outlined below:

Type in the following and choose from the first page (My answers in orange).

1: Type in “[your name] needs” in the Google search: to take off the gloves
2: Type in “[your name] looks like” in Google search: an adult-sized Cupid of an indiscernible gender (huh?)
3: Type in “[your name] does” in Google search: Wii Fit step class (yeah right!)
4: Type in “[your name] hates” in Google search: Paris (but I've never even been!)
5: Type in “[your name] goes” or “..has gone” in Google search: wild down under!
6. Type in “[your name] ‘”loves”: dogs and Earnest T. Bass (okay...dogs maybe.)
7: Type in “[your name] eats” in Google search: the world! (okay...so I've gained some weight!)
8: Type in “[your name] has” in Google search: has tumbled from the ranks of angels.
9. Type in “[your name] died” in Google search: 5 days after the bout (should have taken off the gloves!)
10. Type in “[your name] will” in Google search: piledrive your mother. (I promise I'm not violent!)

A waste of time? Maybe. But it was a fun 10 minutes. :)

50th Post

For my 50th post, I thought I'd do something a little different. I am listing 50 of my favorite things! Enjoy!

1. My family!

2. Blogging

3. Scrapbooking

4. Coke Zero

5. Vanilla ice cream (so many options to put on it)

6. Scrapbook supply bargains

7. Card making

8. Fresh strawberries

9. Baked potato pizza from Stevi B's

10. Happy Cake from Barbecue Barn (YUM)

11. Cards in the mail

12. Clean bed sheets

13. Mercy Me

14. Photos/my digital camera

15. Christmas

16. WAFJ

17. Days or Our Lives

18. American Idol

19. The Bachelor/Bachelorette

20. Anne of Green Gables

21. Ocean breezes

22. Our swimming pool

23. DARK chocolate!

24. Flip flops

25. Garlic on anything

26. Bread

27. Hydrangeas

28. Beth Moore Bible studies

29. Olive Garden

30. Blue Jeans

31. My green purse

32. FALL

33. Dollar stores

34. Magazines

35. Contemporary Christian music

36. Happy Endings

37. Taking classes / learning

38. Baseball

39. Dogs

40. HGTV

41. Birthday cake

42. Spending fun time with my 2 sons

43. Classic black and white

44. BB Q's

45. Snow

46. The sound of rain and the smell after rain

47. Dr. Seuss books

48. Earth tones

49. Eating breakfast out

50. Beautiful sunsets

wordless Wednesday

father's day

Happy Father's Day! I realize not that many guys will be reading this, but hopefully my man will. We had a great day today. After church, we stopped and got food, brought it back home and ate by the pool. We swam until the thunder ran us into the house. Here are some photos from today. Aren't our sunflowers pretty? They line the fence at one end of the pool. Hope you've had a great day as well.

ten on Thursday

Ten Random Thoughts on Thursday

1. I get so tired of hearing people say that Father's Day isn't as big a holiday as Mother's Day. I'll sympathize when men start giving birth! LOL!

2. I am taking another class from Big Picture. (More on that to come.)

3. It's weird with the kids being out of school and not having to get out of the house as much.

4. All that will change next week when Matthew goes to OT camp (1 1/2 hours every day).

5. I never thought I'd see in my lifetime gas prices at $3.78 per gallon. GEEZ!

6. My older son just said for the first time this summer, "I'm bored."

7. I'm almost 44 years old, and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I know I'll be returning to work in the near future, but so much has changed that my stomach churns thinking about entering a high school classroom again. I would really love to do something different. If you happen to hear from God before I do about what that should be, let me know!

8. The worst thing about cooking to me is meal planning. I hate planning meals, buying the stuff and figuring out what we'll eat each night. I love to eat, nevertheless! LOL!

9. During the summer months, I spend probably hours all totalled picking up little plastic ends of ice pop sleeves! Geez! Find a trash can already!

10. My hairdresser retired a couple of weeks ago. Boo Hoo! I'm in desperate need of a new one...a good one. Know any?

baby, it's hot!

At 8:30 AM, it was already 77 degrees here in Beech Island! My hubby said, "It's supposed to be a little cooler today.....99 instead of 100!" Sunday was 101. To top it off, our air conditioning upstairs hasn't worked consistently for 2 weeks! But to put a positive spin on it, we have ceiling fans, and there is a window air conditioning unit in my scrapbook room. Hope YOU are staying cool!

fifth grade social

Last Friday night (May 30), I chaperoned my son's fifth grade social. Okay... it was a dance, but really it was a bunch a kids (and a few brave grown-ups) doing line dances and eating the tons of food that was brought. The kids had a great time, and I didn't realize until this night that my son was such a dancing fool! LOL! He really got into it and had a great time. Nothing shy about him! The photos above sort of let you see what it was like. The first photo is Jonathan with his teacher....I get a photo of him with his teacher every year. The first song on my play list was one of the songs they played at the dance over and OVER and over again! It was a fun dance, and not too hard to learn for wall flowers like myself. I had never heard it until this night...yeah, I know. I don't get out much! I know this night will be one Jonathan won't soon forget.

graduation/promotion

I have attended two "graduations" within the past two days. Some prefer to call them "promotion ceremonies" until they reach their senior year. Yesterday was for my 6 year old who graduated from kindergarten. The whole ceremony was just too cute! Then this morning, my 11 year old "graduated" from fifth grade. They had a whole awards ceremony and everything. It was great. I was blown away and so filled with pride for Jonathan! He's just amazing. Listed here are the awards he got this morning:

President's Gold Award for Educational Excellence (all A's for the year)
A Honor Roll for FIVE years (See cool trophy below.)
Roland Smith Honor Roll Citation (SC's award for all A's or all A/B's for the year)
Principal's Honor Roll (All A's for year)
Honor Roll (A\B's for 4th quarter)
Certificate of Perfect attendance (4th quarter and year)
Math Award
Spelling Award


NOW! Tell me my kid isn't smart! :) We are so proud.